Open AccessPopulation Aging Can Aggravate Air Pollution: Evidence from China
Author(s) -
Hui Shi
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international journal of economics and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1916-9728
pISSN - 1916-971X
DOI - 10.5539/ijef.v11n2p41
Subject(s) - population ageing , china , population , air pollution , consumption (sociology) , air quality index , pollution , natural resource economics , energy consumption , development economics , demographic economics , geography , environmental health , economics , engineering , medicine , meteorology , ecology , social science , archaeology , sociology , electrical engineering , biology
Population, resources and environment have always attracted much attention from the society. Nowadays, pollution and population aging are urgent problems to be solved in China, and many scholars have found a strong correlation between pollution and aging. This paper constructs a KAYA model with aging variables, making an empirical analysis of the relationship between population aging and air pollution based on the panel data of 82 cities in China from 2011 to 2016. We found that population aging has a significant and positive impact on air pollution. 1% change of the population aging will lead to a 0.203% change in AQI. The deepening of China’s aging level will lead to ineffective improvement of air quality and even lead to more serious air pollution. Then we make the further analysis of the impact mechanism of population aging on air quality, the results show that population aging could have a positive impact on air pollution by improving labor productivity, promoting technological innovation, increasing fossil energy consumption and the household consumption, and changing the structure of household consumption. At last, in order to improve the air pollution under the background of population aging, we put forward the policy recommendations according to the conclusion of this paper.